Novell's patent sale: FSFE's input to competion authorities

op: 2011-04-12

On April 6, FSFE provided the German competition authorities with its
views
on the sale of Novell's patents to CPTN, a joint venture of
Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle. According to the German authorities,
the terms of the sale have been slightly modified since
we registered
our concerns with them on December 22, 2010.
Despite these modifications, the transfer of a substantial number of
patents to firms with a history of using them against Free Software
remains a worrying prospect. Both documents are available on our
overview
page for the case.

In our reply , we make clear that this modification does not allay our
concerns that Novell's patents may be used to limit competition. There
are several reasons to be worried, notably:

access to more patents will increase the respective dominant
positions of the CPTN investors;

What will Attachmate do with those patents? The company does not
have an established track record in Free Software, and there is
nothing to keep Attachmate from either selling the patents on to a
third party, or trying to turn litigation into a revenue
driver. Could Attachmate become a second SCO?

Any financial relationship between Attachmate and Microsoft needs
to be clarified.

As a remedy, we propose that the Novell patents which CPTN is seeking
to acquire should be made available under conditions that allow
implementation in Free Software, including under the GPL. This would
be a royalty-free, perpetual license. Their owners could still enforce
the patents against proprietary implementations. But there would be no
further danger that they would be used to limit competition from Free
Software.